Nevertheless, to be acknowledged as a collector was definitely pleasing. Well, being the biggest in anything to do with cricket in The Netherlands is near- pathetic as far as achievements are concerned. It has ceased to be an elite undertaking.Įven then, one of the greatest joys to yours truly was when the revered Peter Wynne-Thomas of the Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club, sitting in his library, introduced me to one of his acquaintances as the possessor of the biggest cricket book collection in The Netherlands. With the profusion of books in the field in the last few decades, and the growth of cricket societies around the world, cricket collecting has evolved. They keep the thread of history running through the game. In their own ways, substantial or otherwise, they keep cricket literature and cricketana alive. Yet the cricket collector serves a very important purpose. To the uninitiated eye, it may come across as just a grotesque monstrosity of a utensil.Īnd let me not even get started on the forbidding old dusty hard-backed volumes containing yellow pages of bland prose, documenting the deeds of obscure dead cricketers and details of long forgotten matches. And then one needs the knowledge to revel in the piece of history embedded in the intersection of those 100 bats, the century of centuries of the famous cricketer it commemorates. It requires a special eye to appreciate the beauty of a piece of china specifically crafted in 100 tiny pieces resembling cricket bats. He wades knee-deep through books, prints, souvenirs and ephemera that hold scant value for the rest of the world, even when we consider other assiduous collectors. The cricket collector is a curious creature. Arunabha Sengupta looks back at the collection he amassed through his six decades of diligence.
Match book collector how to#
Now that it is getting harder for him to get up and down the steep stairs, he is pondering how to close the book on his collection.AL Ford, born in 1843, was one of the earliest of the great collectors of cricket books, pictures and prints.
![match book collector match book collector](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/4kwAAOSw~-Zcv5dc/s-l640.jpg)
He was never in it to make money, it was just a hobby. That one’s probably worth $125 by itself.” “Like this one of Princess Dianna and Charles from their wedding, I got it in a banana box that a guy was selling at a flea market in Florida. He doesn’t trade or sell them only a few have significant value. “He said, grandma, there are girly ones down there.”Įven though it’s really damp in the cellar and does not worry about a fire, he still takes the matches out of most. He has a few with “pinnup girls” on them and has a laugh when telling how his 14 year old grandson came up from the basement one day.
Match book collector series#
Local candidates running for office and 7 in a series with Dale Ernhardt for the years he won the championship.
![match book collector match book collector](https://www.laura-peters.co.uk/img/s/v-10/p158894814-5.jpg)
There are big ones, little ones, shaped ones, fancy ones. They represent 3,180 hotels and motels, 424 casinos, 998 Florida restaurants and 447 weddings and dozens of other sub catagories. The matches all have their place on his basement walls. His home is just down from Tim Hortons coffee shop on Sabattus Street in Lewiston where he can be found many mornings with a group of friends socializing.įriends, relatives and fellow workers often leave bags of matches on his doorstep, or bring some back from trips. Over 4,000 more are alphabetalized in boxes waiting to be added. Today he has 19,886 that are categorized, cataloged and displayed on the walls and custom made displays that snake through his basement.